“500 Days of Summer” is one of those indie gems that has been building momentum since Sundance and, in the clip below, you’ll catch a glimpse at why; On beyond a great script and no small amount of style, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel share a chemistry that would make you believe that they’ve been working together for years. Doubly surprising is finding out that they have.

“We’ve known each other for almost ten years,” Zooey told MTV News, citing a little-known project called “Manic” in 2001 that brought the pair together. They became fast friends, just as Joseph was leaving acting for awhile to go back to school and Zooey was leaving school to go back to acting.

The argument led to Zooey sharing with Joseph one of her all time favorite films, Jean-Luc Godard’s “A Woman is a Woman”, a French New Wave romantic comedy/musical. By complete coincidence, the Godard film ended up being the perfect dry-run for “Summer” which, though the pair agree is more Francois Truffaut than Godard, is New Wave-inspired through and through.

Among the films that first-time feature director Marc Webb screened for cast and crew before production were “Annie Hall” and “High Fidelity,” both of which are perfect matches for the magical realism of “500 Days of Summer.” But you don’t have to take my word for it. Check out the clip, start counting days of summer till the July 14th release and then click it here to watch our interview with the pair when we caught up with them at Sundance in January.